Thanks, Norma, for your cornbread

Ali Wirt with her honey-butter cornbread. (Photo: J.D. Pooley/Sentinel-Tribune)

GRAND RAPIDS - Sometimes a really good recipe will travel all the way around the world.
That's practically the case for Ali Wirt's delectable cornbread, a family treasure obtained a generation ago from a neighbor when they lived in Hawaii.
To this day, Wirt and her kin all refer to it as Norma's Cornbread, in that woman's honor.
"Norma was our neighbor in Waipahu, Hawaii and a wonderful cook," says Wirt. "Her mother was full blood Sioux Indian and her dad was of Scandinavian ancestry. I believe this is her mother's recipe."  
Wirt was just a toddler at the time. "We lived in Hawaii when my dad was in the Navy; I was born there. But the recipe has been in our family ever since then.
"My two sisters and one brother - all three of them make it."
Wirt, in turn, has made the cornbread for her own family, including children 20, 15, 13 and 9, "and for my husband's family. In fact, it's become a staple for them too."
One year, her husband and her son both entered Norma's Cornbread in a chili cookoff at their church, with her son tweaking the recipe just a bit, "and they took first and second place."